WASHINGTON/GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - The United States has secured the release of 135 political prisoners in Nicaragua on humanitarian grounds, the White House said on Thursday, adding that they will go to Guatemala before seeking to lawfully move to the United States or other nations.
The release follows "months of negotiations between the U.S. and Nicaragua," the U.S. and Guatemala said in a joint statement.
Those released are all Nicaraguan citizens, the White House said, and include members of a Christian evangelical organization, Catholic lay people, and students.
Last year, more than 200 Nicaraguan political prisoners were freed and flown to the United States. At the time, President Daniel Ortega - who has launched a crackdown on dissent in recent years - described the release as a push to expel criminals who were working to undermine Nicaragua.
His administration did not immediately comment on the latest release.
The plane carrying the Nicaraguans arrived in Guatemala early Thursday morning, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo's office said.
Those freed will stay in Guatemala, where they will have the opportunity to lawfully request to go to another country. The U.S. provided their transport and will feed and house them as well, it said in the statement with Guatemala.
In 2021, Washington imposed sanctions and denounced Ortega's re-election as a "sham" after all of his top opponents were rounded up and detained by police in the months leading up to the vote, with journalists and religious figures also imprisoned.
Among the prisoners freed include 13 members of Texas-based evangelical organization Mountain Gateway, the White House said.
According to Mountain Gateway, 11 of its pastors had been arrested in December 2023 and were convicted earlier this year on charges of money laundering, which the organization denounced as baseless.
"It is heartbreaking to know that people who we consider family are sitting in prison for sharing the Gospel," Mountain Gateway President Jon Britton Hancock said in a March statement.
Ortega has accused church leaders of looking to overthrow his government after the Catholic Church tried to mediate talks between the administration and anti-government protesters in 2018.
The mass street protests were met with a violent counterattack from Ortega's security forces in which more than 300 civilians were killed, according to rights groups and international observers.
Since then, the government has arrested or expelled scores of Catholic priests and shuttered several thousand civil society groups, most accused of financial crimes.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Costas Pitas, Kylie Madry and Sofia Menchu; Editing by William Maclean, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Alistair Bell)